Larry Summers = The New Bob Reich?

April 29, 2009

From David Leonhardt's interview with Obama for this Sunday's Times Magazine:

[Leonhardt]: When you and I spoke during the campaign, you made it clear that you had thought a lot about the economic debates within the Clinton administration. And you said that you wanted to have a Robert Rubin type and a Robert Reich type having a vigorous debate in front of you. ...

THE PRESIDENT: ... When I first started having a round table of economic advisers, and Bob Reich was part of that, and he was sitting across the table from Bob Rubin and others, what you discovered was that some of the rifts that had existed back in the Clinton years had really narrowed drastically.

[Leonhardt:] They agree a lot more than they used to, but not entirely.

THE PRESIDENT: Not entirely. But, I mean, the fact is that Larry Summers right now is very comfortable making arguments, often quite passionately, that Bob Reich used to be making when he was in the Clinton White House. Now Larry might not like me saying that -

[Leonhardt:] Larry Summers is the new Bob Reich -

THE PRESIDENT: - that he's become a soft touch. But, no, I think that one of the things that we all agree to is that the touchstone for economic policy is, does it allow the average American to find good employment and see their incomes rise; that we can't just look at things in the aggregate, we do want to grow the pie, but we want to make sure that prosperity is spread across the spectrum of regions and occupations and genders and races; and that economic policy should focus on growing the pie, but it also has to make sure that everybody has got opportunity in that system.